Seniors at home to Gog Magog July 22 2025

 

Seniors Captain Tony Lloyd with organiser Paul Jones and their Gog Magog opponents

Organiser Paul Jones reports

I left home in a light drizzle, curious about what the day would bring. After driving through a few mini climate changes, I arrived and it was a lovely morning with the mercury reading 19 degrees, which is surely warm enough for shorts.

There were no noticeable latecomers, so once introductions concluded, everyone was raring to go.

During the round we experienced some unsettled weather and although the rain was never particularly heavy there were some incidents of RSI reported.  Allegedly Gavin Little put his shoulder out by having to deploy his umbrella so much and every time one of our opponents in the first match took his jacket off, the rain resumed.

Captain Tony and I watched our opponents tee off on the first hole on Carthagena.  Their acting captain hit his shot well left, and it flew over the white stakes.  I was just starting to think about changing from my driver to a “safer” club when the ball hit a tree and bounced back onto the fairway.  From there he managed to get his team a half after I three putted the first and Tony visited the first of many bunkers. Was it going to be one of those days I thought to myself.

On the second tee Tony put his ball on the green and won that hole. We lost the third, Tony didn’t have a shot so he thought that he would lose his ball on the left to save time and put some pressure on his partner who duly capitulated.

We edged back in front on the fourth, halved the fifth and lost the sixth as their acting Captain Tim, put his ball to about 4 feet from the hole thus winning the Gog Magog nearest the pin prize.

The seventh hole was halved by the two players who didn’t have shots and then the JOG pair won the eight hole.

After the eight hole we were one up and there followed six holes that were halved included a couple of extremely rare sand saves from the author.

Tony won the fifteenth hole and I was able to win the 16^th so we closed out our match 3 and 2.

The second match went down to the final hole but one of the JOG players had the dreaded three putts to lose that match one down.

After six results were known the score stood at 3 -3 and I looked at the final groups trying to predict the outcome.

One group contained a recent golfer of the year and the reigning Reg Batson winner. Surely Barry Donovan, ably assisted by a relative newcomer Roy Brown, would deliver a point.

The other group contained Chris Saunders freshly back from a golf trip where he played progressively worse rounds probably due to late nights and copious amounts of liquid refreshment consumed.  The resultant slight handicap (20% increase) adjustment for Chris meant that, for a change, one of his opponents was playing off the same handicap so providing his partner Paul Dobson could match the other Gog Magog player we could get the all-important final point.

 Paul was taking it very seriously and pulled out a brand-new ball on their first hole (the 17^th) which disappeared as he duly dispatched it into the rough on the left hand side, never to be seen again.

Nearest the pin for John O’Gaunt on the 8th was Paul Life.

Afterwards we enjoyed a splendid meal of Beef bourguignon followed by pavlova

Captain Tim revealed the result which was a 5 – 3 win for the hosts and Tony and the JOG players wished our opponents a safe journey and expressed our anticipation for the return fixture in September.

 

The full results were;

Tony Lloyd	Paul Jones	Won 3&2
Jack Shepherd	Derek Page	Lost 1 down
Peter Imray	Paul Life	Lost 3&2
Gavin Little	Richard Cobb	Lost 4&3
Barry Donovan	Roy Brown	Won 1 up
Paul R Hammond	Kevin Barbour	Won 5&4
Stephen Mathers	David Trotter	Won 2 up
Chris Saunders	Paul Dobson	Won 4&3

 

Running tally for JOG

Won 8

Lost 9

Halved 1